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Bethesda Announces Fallout 3 "Survival" Edition

Amazon.com exclusive will include all Collectors' Edition materials plus a Pip-Boy 3000 clock.

Today Bethesda Software announced an exclusive arrangement with Amazon.com to market and sell the "Survival Edition" of Fallout 3, its upcoming post-apocalyptic RPG. According to the press release, the "Survivor Edition" will include all of the specialty items included in the previously announced "Collector's Edition" along with a life-size replica of the Pip-Boy 3000, which functions as a digital clock.

In the fictional post-apocalyptic world of Fallout, the Pip-Boy 3000 is a late-model version of a wearable computer device manufactured prior to the nuclear war that devastated the Earth. Earlier versions of the Pip-Boy functioned as the interfaces in the prior Fallout games. According to a developer diary entitled "Creating Collectibles" by Bethesda Product Manager Pete Hines on the official Fallout 3 Web site, the idea for the special collectible hit while sitting in his office after a discussion with producer Todd Howard investigated how such a device might be replicated in the real world as a collectible. The design is life-size and functions as a digital watch so that the collectible would not be "...just an inanimate object that sat there."

The remainder of the "Survival Edition" of Fallout 3 is identical to the "Collector's Edition" of the game and includes a copy of the game, an artificially aged lunch-box sporting "Vault-Tec" iconography, a five-inch Vault Boy bobble head, "The Art of Fallout 3" hardcover book and a "Making of Fallout 3" DVD. The Fallout 3 "Survival Edition" will retail for US$129.99 ($119.99 for the PC version). The game is currently slated to ship this October.